I’m taking Mindfulness 101–

Again.

Our teacher says this is a lifelong practice. It’s not in the clouds; it’s here. You practice exercising volition over your attention, so the stories in your head don’t pull you like a stubborn dog on a leash.

She brought up the image of a beautiful woman in a meditative pose on a beach — a common stock photo for the idea of “mindfulness or meditation or yoga.” The meme also pictured “what it’s really like” to practice mindfulness: a woman drowning in bed covers, Medusa hair mess and her own contorted expression.

That’s more like it.

If you practice anything everyday, I wonder: the totality is joyous(ish) effort but that effort in totality isn’t always pretty. Daily practice on my mat does not involve a flowing yellow skirt, bottom perched in perfect filtered light in an instagrammarific pose plucked for its pretty perfection. Instead it is the daily getting up, organizing life to make it happen, blood from your battered toes, sweat in your eyes, dog chewed edge of your yoga mat, de-stink laundry woes, finding lacy underwear in your yoga towel, screaming fear-joy (it’s hard to tell, honestly), smiles at surprise landings and frustration at recalcitrant hamstrings and oh, if you could only see the parade of thoughts lining up to battle my ujayyi breath.

If it’s everyday you will be sick, tired, injured, stiff, heartbroken, ebullient and hot stuff in regular rotation some of the days. Everyday means some days you can’t do what you did like a Light-on-Yoga Jivanmukta ninja three weeks before. It means some days thoughts will wage war to continue on with the awful story chute they’re hurtling down, your own drama a la Lauren Conrad shouting through MTV hallowed history: “you know what you did!”

I’ve found that cerebral cesspool to be unphotoshoppable. You can only breathe into your aliveness, the now, and thank the irascible rishis the third series poses are named after for hooking you out of your loser bowl loop. They do so simply by transforming you into a confused fallen angel mess. You meet yourself on the mat, all your ridiculousness, the absurdistan that is the territory inside your cerebrum and soul. In the mirror of yoga, I’m something —

But not pretty.

I’m guilty of becoming a twitterbot, a social media automaton-ic cyborg, a Faustian Facebook sell out: my unglamorous home practice is still–

Curated. Edited. Take the still; cut the messy transition. Delete when my butt looks too butt-ish and my face far from Fetch. It’s not fake— I really take these from my home practice in real time and I really do smile. I like to think I’m real-er than a robot. But there’s Inevitable hidden reality: procrastination, doubt, dust-clean up, my emergence as a creature from the black lagoon, what-happened-there-transitions, forgotten breaths and falls out of chakorasana, the shower and from grace.

Artifice by omission?

When i look at Ass-ana online– I sometimes think there’s a “there” to reach where it’s all Costa Rica handstands with dogs, bikini butts, shirtless tattoo handstand kisses and how-in-the-hell-is-that-even-possible-hullabullaoos. It’s the there you’ve seen on yoga journal covers, profiles of insta yogi-pros sponsored by Alo and algorithms, and even a smidge from the hokey holly hobby insta-home-practioners like me.

I have good news!

You will never get there, Jean. You will never be able to say, like your friend a few weeks into CorePower classes:

“I got this.”

Honey–the minute you got this, you’ll get a pose so crazy you’ll fall on your face sweating out your root chakra and wobble out of the room with your insides–downsized. You’re gonna meet yourself again and again and again, be it with rooster pose, your Trump-loving relatives or shots in your belly.

You may study mindfulness forever. In fact, Jean, you’re special…ly crazy and you should. You’ll “Ekam” everyday from here to eternity and never be done. You’ll never be wanting for wonder in triangle pose. The breath will always call you its bitch.

Thank god for that.

You just keep practicing practicing. And maybe you’ll get better– at practicing.

Look at this rich life arena raining shit on you for practice (have you seen the news?): keep spelunking through it for SPACE. You keep practicing, you find more and more of it. Getting knees into your armpits in third series and when the day’s drama colonizes your frontal cortex:

“Asana is pranayama for restless people“* — From which

 “There is no graduation“**

Taking Mindfulness 101–

Again.